Culture
100 verified facts in this category.
- The Pirahã people of the Amazon have no words for specific numbers, colors, or perfect tenses, and their language contains no recursion—challenging Chomsky's theory of universal grammar.
- Andean dark constellations are formed by molecular clouds and interstellar dust lanes located along the Milky Way.
- The Basque language is a language isolate unrelated to any other known language on Earth, predating the arrival of Indo-European languages in Europe by thousands of years.
- The name 'Armalamor' is a coined word formed from the initial syllables of the names of four modern artists: Hans Arp, Henri Matisse, Henri Laurens, and Henry Moore.
- The Tribunal de les Aigües de la Vega de Valéncia has operated for over 1,000 years.
- A United States Court of Appeals sent the Oakhurst Dairy overtime case back to a lower court due to ambiguity caused by the lack of a serial (Oxford) comma in the Maine statute.
- The truck drivers argued that 'packing for shipment or distribution' referred to a single job, and that since they only delivered goods rather than packing them, they were owed overtime pay.
- The word 'filibuster' derives from a Dutch word meaning 'freebooter' or pirate.
- The British Guiana 1c Magenta stamp went on display in London after being sold for $8.3 million.
- Marriages between Black and white individuals account for only 11% of all interracial marriages in the United States.
- Archivist Anna Rimel discovered four small watercolors by Yayoi Kusama among materials preserved in the Joseph Cornell Study Center, and the works were subsequently transferred to the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection.
- Dr. Paul Singer (1904–1997) kept one of America's most distinguished private collections of Chinese art in a two-bedroom apartment in Summit, New Jersey.
- Cooper Hewitt acquired a black brooch made from ballistic Kevlar with velvet leaves, designed by Tobias Wong in 2004 and intended to be bulletproof.
- Charles Lang Freer's restrictions required that the U.S. collection never be altered, loaned to other exhibitions, or supplemented with outside works.
- In 1918, an article published by MacLean's declared the dingonek to be a newly discovered animal species.
- Edgar Beecher Bronson, a big-game hunter, recounted the 1907 dingonek sighting in his 1910 memoir 'In Closed Territory'.
- Alyoshenka, also known as the Kyshtym Dwarf, is an infant whose mummified remains were discovered in the village of Kaolinovy, near Kyshtym, Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia.
- Until March 2025, the Beeston bananas plate appeared at the junction of Abbey Road and Wensor Avenue in Beeston, Nottinghamshire.
- Until March 2025, the mysterious plate of bananas in Beeston appeared at the junction of Abbey Road and Wensor Avenue.
- A plate of peeled bananas has appeared on a street corner in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, every month for over a year, as of January 2025.
- Andean dark constellations are called 'yana phuyu' in Quechua, which literally translates to 'black cloud'.
- Japan's Hadaka Matsuri (Naked Festival) involves thousands of nearly-naked men competing to touch a sacred wooden stick, with origins dating back 500 years as a purification ritual.
- Robert Crumb distanced himself from the film adaptation of his comic character Fritz the Cat.
- Painter Markus Lüpertz's 2012/13 illustrated edition of the Basic Law contains 19 paintings placed between the articles on fundamental rights.
- Stage Show was broadcast live from CBS Studio 50 in New York, the same studio that housed The Ed Sullivan Show.
- The Tribunal de les Aigües de la Vega de Valéncia meets every Thursday at noon at the Apostles Gate of Valencia Cathedral in Plaza de la Virgen, Spain.
- Maine's own legislative style guide discourages the use of the serial (Oxford) comma.
- Judge David J. Barron wrote in the ruling, "For want of a comma, we have this case."
- The dairy argued that 'packing for shipment' and 'distribution' were two different jobs under Maine's overtime exemption statute.
- New Zealand economist Marilyn Waring wrote a book called Counting for Nothing in 1988 about how women's and the environment's contributions were invisible in policymaking.
- The second edition of 'Nihon Kokugo Daijiten' (Shogakukan, 2000-2002) contains a total of 500,000 entries and 1,000,000 usage examples.
- When Yayoi Kusama returned to Japan in 1973, she brought magazine cuttings that Joseph Cornell had given her and used them to create intricate collages.
- Before arriving in New York City, Yayoi Kusama spent a brief period in Seattle.
- Yayoi Kusama brought approximately 2,000 works on paper with her when she left Japan in 1957, intending to sell them to support herself.
- Four Yayoi Kusama compositions now held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum were made in the mid-1950s using watercolor, ink, pastel, and tempera paint, before Kusama moved from Japan to the United States.
- A receipt dated August 22, 1964, preserved in the Cornell Study Center, records Joseph Cornell's purchase of four Yayoi Kusama works now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum's collection.
- Cooper Hewitt acquired a black brooch made from bulletproof ballistic Kevlar with velvet leaves, designed by Tobias Wong in 2004.
- Charles Lang Freer's restrictions required that the U.S. collection never be altered, loaned to other exhibitions, or supplemented with outside works, while he later allowed additional acquisitions to the Asian collection.
- The Library of Congress's book and serial collections represent more than 460 languages, with approximately half of those collections in languages other than English.
- Charles William Hobley claimed in his 1913 article to have encountered further accounts of creatures similarly described to the dingonek.
- The dingonek is a creature reportedly seen near Lake Victoria in 1907 by big game hunter John Alfred Jordan and members of his hunting party.
- In folklore, black-eyed children are alleged to be undead, ghostly, demonic, alien, or otherwise inhuman creatures impersonating ordinary human children.
- Black-eyed children are reportedly seen begging or hitchhiking, or encountered on doorsteps of residential homes.
- Some medical examiners disputed the initial determination that Alyoshenka's remains were those of a premature baby with congenital anomalies.
- The identity of the person who places the Beeston bananas plate is unknown.
- The identity of the person or people who place the plate of bananas in Beeston is unknown.
- Ancient Romans used fermented fish sauce called garum as their primary condiment on nearly every dish—so valuable it was traded empire-wide and some varieties cost more than perfume.
- Women earned 85% of bachelor's degrees in health-related fields in the U.S. in 2018, but only 22% in engineering and 19% in computer science.
- Ferdinand Kriwet (1942–2018) gained international recognition in the early 1960s with his 'Sehtexte' published by the Cologne-based DuMont publishing house.
- Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924–1992) was both a poet and a Benedictine monk.
- The 'Bonner Kommentar' is the oldest and most extensive commentary on the German Basic Law, published as a loose-leaf collection since 1950 and now filling 25 binders.
- Before Elvis Presley's June 5, 1956 performance of 'Hound Dog' on The Milton Berle Show, Milton Berle reportedly told him, "Let 'em see you, son," advising him to perform without his guitar.
- In the opening scene of Arthur Conan Doyle's 1890 novel 'The Sign of Four', Sherlock Holmes injects himself with a 7 per cent solution of cocaine using a hypodermic syringe.
- Leo Perutz began writing 'Mayflower' before his 1938 emigration from Austria to Palestine and abandoned the work in 1945.
- Of Leo Perutz's unfinished novel 'Mayflower,' only the first two of originally four chapters survive today.
- High-tech swimsuits, including the Speedo LZR suit introduced in 2008, were banned in competitive swimming in 2010.
- The Fosbury flop high jump technique was introduced in competition in 1968 for men and 1972 for women.
- The Getty provides, free of charge, all available digital images to which it holds the rights or that are in the public domain.
- The Shahnameh, a Persian epic in the Library of Congress collection, consists of 62 stories divided into 990 chapters and contains 50,000 rhyming couplets.
- King George V formed an outstanding European stamp collection especially rich in British and colonial stamps, which was later passed on to succeeding British monarchs.
- The Library of Congress's digitized Persian collection includes a copy of the Shahnameh, an epic consisting of 62 stories divided into 990 chapters and containing 50,000 rhyming couplets.
- Charles Lang Freer later allowed additional acquisitions to be added to the Asian portion of his collection, unlike the U.S. collection.
- The word 'aspis' is Greek and means 'viper'.
- In folklore, black-eyed children are said to manipulate people by requesting rides in vehicles.
- In folklore, black-eyed children are said to manipulate people by requesting entry into houses.
- Black-eyed children are legendary paranormal creatures originating in modern American folklore.
- Black-eyed children are described as superficially resembling human children or teenagers between the ages of 6 to 16.
- Christian Zervos compiled a catalogue raisonné of Pablo Picasso's works.
- "World painting index" catalogs paintings that appeared in art books published between 1940 and 1999.
- Houédard's 1965 work 'Frog Pond Plop' references a famous haiku by Matsuo Basho (1644–1694) about the sound of a frog jumping into a pond.
- The first edition of Buddenbrooks was priced at 12 Mark.
- The first edition of Buddenbrooks was published on 26 February 1901 in 1,000 copies as a two-volume set by Fischer Verlag.
- Six artists—Georg Baselitz, Jochen Gerz, Candida Höfer, Ilya Kabakov, Per Kirkeby and Tobias Rehberger—were selected through a competition under the Kunst-am-Bau program for the German National Library's Frankfurt building.
- The wooden sculpture 'Armalamor' in the DNB Frankfurt rotunda was created by Georg Baselitz.
- Six artists—Georg Baselitz, Jochen Gerz, Candida Höfer, Ilya Kabakov, Per Kirkeby and Tobias Rehberger—were selected through a competition for the Kunst-am-Bau program at the new DNB building.
- 『日本の国宝』(Nihon no Kokuhō) consists of 111 volumes total, comprising 11 bound volumes plus 1 index volume.
- Two days after his Stage Show debut, Elvis Presley recorded 'Blue Suede Shoes' at RCA Victor Studio 1 in New York.
- Before his national television debut, Elvis Presley had performed on the regional TV program Louisiana Hayride in March 1955.
- Elvis Presley's first national television appearance was on Stage Show on January 28, 1956.
- The Beatles decided to release 'All You Need Is Love' as a single on June 24, 1967, the day before the live broadcast.
- The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden acquired 141 contemporary Chinese photographs, dating from 1993 to 2022, as a gift from collector Larry Warsh.
- The Library of Congress has digitized 155 Persian-language texts, including works dating back to the 13th century and spanning nearly 1,000 years.
- Black-eyed children are described as having pale skin and pitch-black eyes.
- "The world's master paintings: from the early Renaissance to the present day" (Routledge, 1992) lists works by 1,300 painters and their locations worldwide.
- "World painting index" was published by Scarecrow Press in 8 volumes between 1977 and 2003.
- The 1999 reference work 『西洋美術全集絵画索引』, supervised by the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library, covers paintings roughly from the 12th century onward.
- The U.S. marriage rate was 6.1 marriages per 1,000 total population in 2023.
- The U.S. divorce rate was 2.4 divorces per 1,000 population in 2023, covering 45 reporting states and the District of Columbia.
- The Deutsches Exilarchiv opened its first permanent exhibition, 'Exil. Erfahrung und Zeugnis,' on 8 March 2018.
- The Deutsches Exilarchiv (DEA) has grown to hold over 33,000 publications and more than 350 personal estates and institutional archives.
- Zap Comix has been published since 1968.
- Aline Kominsky Crumb, Robert Crumb's wife and artistic collaborator, died in 2022.
- Writer Navid Kermani described the Basic Law as a 'remarkably beautiful text' ("bemerkenswert schöner Text").
- A notable peak in publication of new editions of the German Basic Law occurred in 2019, marking its 70th anniversary.
- The list price of 'オセアニア文化事典' is 24,000 yen.
- The cover of the book 「美術」概念の再構築(アップデイト): 「分類の時代」の終わりに bears the English title 'Toward Updating the Concept of "Bijutsu(Art)"'.
- 『美術関係雑誌目次総覧』(Bijutsu Kankei Zasshi Mokuji Sōran) covers the tables of contents of 53 major Japanese art magazines from early Meiji (1868) through August of Showa 20 (1945).
- The Japanese art magazine 『国華』(Kokka) was first published in October of Meiji 22, which corresponds to 1889.
- 『日本美術館』(Nihon Bijutsukan) contains approximately 3,000 Japanese artworks spanning from the Paleolithic era to the present.
- The publication series 現代の眼 ran from issue 1 to issue 634, with issue 634 published in the January-March 2020 period.